Duncan Barkes

I'm not going to say that he suggests that the pure as the driven snow, John Massino, lent on EFL officials in order to have the frozen pitch game postponed.

But it's clear that McKenna thinks that that is a possibility, which suggests to me always as a student of human nature, when somebody thinks that somebody might have been up to something, it's probably because it's the very same thing that they themselves would do.

Under the circumstances, they construct the internal mental melody of another person around their own question to themselves.

What under those circumstances would I do and would he have hassled for the game to be called off?

because Pompey were, I don't know, down to about eight fit men or something, he's suggesting that he would.

But he still saw that for us it wasn't a case of we would, it was a case of we did.

Allegedly.

John Massino on the decision to take Jacob Brown to Middlesbrough, but not actually include him in the squad, preferring instead Thomas Waddingham.

Yeah, it's why football management is a little bit like three-dimensional chess, really, because you're playing lots of games at lots of different levels.

Obviously, you want the best team you can put out there.

You want the best performance you can get.

You want the best result that you can get.

But there are other things that you have to juggle as well.

And one thing that John Massino didn't refer to there is the probability that because Waddingham belongs to us, he's under contract to us, he's seen as being someone with potential, but he's also something of an asset.

Then that is going to make it more likely that he'll get the nod.

over Brown competent though Brown is he hasn't quite managed to click yet could still be early days mind you he's only got four more games to go so it's early days and late in the day at the same time for him but as he's probably going to go back to Luton

in a few weeks time then again Messina got this call marginal though it was absolutely right Brown may not have been too pleased to have sat on a coach for five hours stayed overnight in a hotel watched a game from the stands and then sat on a coach all the way back to Pompey

getting in at whatever time in the morning it was.

But he's a professional footballer and I suspect he knows how to take it on the chin and just give it that little bit extra when he's in training in the hope of catching the manager's eye again and finishing the season with some sort of a flourish.

The latest Pompey news, updates every day from the Pompey Sound News Desk.